Grants for Renewables

The just relaunched Low Carbon Building grants from BERR, the Government Department, seem like a big disappointment. I was hoping to be able to install a solar heating panel on my roof.

The department website (http://www.lowcarbonbuildings.org.uk/micro/solartherm/) says that this should cost between £3,200 and £4,500 and you would qualify for a grant of £400 or 30% of the cost whichever was the lower. They also say that this would save you around 30% of your hot water heating costs.

The maths do not look attractive. If half of my current £600 per year heating costs are for hot water that means we would save £100 per year through the solar panels. That says it would take around 35 years to pay off the cost of the panels and the grant makes little difference to this return.

OK there are good moral reasons for installing the panels to cut carbon emissions (the BERR site says an average of 330kg per household per year) and the price of energy if likely to go up. But t if the financial arguments are so weak then few people will want to make the improvement and government grants are doing nothing to change their minds.

What a shame.